Gov. Jan Brewer: Racial discrimination doesn’t ‘take place any longer’

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Tea-Publicans truly live in an alternate universe reality. Governor Jan Brewer actually asserted with a straight face that racial discrimination is no longer a problem in this state.

This is the woman who used the racially divisive SB 1070 to get elected to the governor’s office (SB 1070 was later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court as unconstitutional).

This is the state where crazy Uncle Joe Arpaio was just recently found by the federal court to have engaged in a policy of unlawful racial profiling (he is appealing).

This is the state where nativist anti-immigrant politicians like J.D. Hayworth, Russell Pearce, and Andrew Thomas are celebrated as heroes by conservatives in the GOP.

This is the state where Tom “banned for life by the SEC” Horne and John Huppenthal, and editor and columnist Doug MacEachern at The Arizona Republic, have engaged in unhinged demonization (criminalization) of Latino students in Tucson for ethnic studies programs at TUSD.

Jan Brewer is delusional.

RAW Story reports, Arizona governor: Racial discrimination doesn’t ‘take place any longer’:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer (R) on Tuesday said the Voting Rights Act had “hampered” the state and was pleased to see a key provision of the civil rights law struck down.

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When asked why Arizona shouldn’t be required to have its voting laws precleared, Brewer said racial discrimination was no longer a problem in the state.

“I think we were being punished by the Voting Rights Act for indiscretions, bad things that took place decades ago, and those don’t take place any longer,” she told reporters. “We have grown and so it was the right thing to do so I’m pleased.”

The Republican governor said the people of Arizona should “trust” that lawmakers wouldn’t write up racially discriminatory voting laws.

Really Governor? You just signed the Voter Suppression Act, HB 2305, which effectively will eliminate minor political parties from the ballot, and will have a disparate impact on new Latino voters early voting. This did not occur “decades ago,” it happened ealier this month!

Now that Arizona is not subject to Section 5 preclearance under the Voting Rights Act, I fully expect to see state and local Tea-Publicans to go ape shit crazy with creative and innovative ways to suppress minority voters and college age voters, because they are the “wrong kind” of voters — they tend to vote Democratic. Democrats need to be eternally vigilant to observe what election officials are doing with designating polling locations, hours of voting, the type and quality of voting equipment assigned to polling locations, etc.

The Department of Justice has filed formal objections to racially discriminatory changes to Arizona law 22 times since 1973, including each decennial redistricting — except for the most recent redistricting in 2012. So of course, Tea-Publicans filed lawsuits to challenge that redistricting. A decsion from the U.S. District Court is anticipated any day.